Inaugural Lecture - Professor Karen Radner (UCL History)

Professor Karen Radner (UCL History)

Karen
Radner is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History. Trained as a cuneiform
philologist and archaeologist at Vienna and Berlin, she studies the cultural
history of Mesopotamia, in particular at the time of the Assyrian Empire (9th
to 7th century BC). She has served as the field epigrapher of
excavations in Syria, Turkey and Iraq and held positions at Helsinki and Munich
before joining UCL’s History Department in 2005.

A Godforsaken
Country: Assyria after 614 BC

For more
than three centuries, the Assyrian Empire exercised hegemony over the ancient
world. The pathfinder among the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean empires,
Assyrian administrative and infrastructural innovations, such as the first
state-run relay postal network, provided the basis for stable and steady
government over regions of unprecedented reach.

By the 7th century
BC, its influence stretched from Sudan to the Caspian Sea. And suddenly, the
empire vanished. This lecture analyses the significance of the raid of an
ancient temple at the empire’s heart in 614 BC and focuses on the political,
ideological and social impact of this unprecedented event.